


TKO

by LadyWillow



Series: Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor [4]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: #peggysous, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 07:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6070528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyWillow/pseuds/LadyWillow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel Sousa could take a punch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	TKO

Daniel Sousa could take a beat-down. He could give as good as he got. He knew how and when to curl to protect his more vulnerable bits, how to evade the harshest blows.

He’d been a down and dirty street fighter before the Army, a brawler who’d stay out of a fight as long as he could, but make the first punch the last in any fight he couldn’t avoid. In the Army, he’d been trained by the best, and had competed with men from neighbourhoods that fought as hard, but with an intriguing variety of techniques. He learned from them all.

After he’d lost his leg, he’d blended his fighting style with new techniques and worked at turning his perceived disability into a weapon – that crutch across a throat or up against the side of an unsuspecting head nearly always surprised a bully boy who thought the crip was an easy target.

The attack in his own home had been a surprise, and two against one had meant that protection was the best he could do. Even the kick in the guts, a couple broken ribs, hadn’t quite put him down. He’d fought grimly, knowing this was an attack against the team, not sure what his loss would mean to them all. The kick in the head had been… well… a kick in the head, though, and when he woke up in the morning, blood in his mouth and a thousand explosions of pain when he tried to get off the floor, he had gritted his teeth and moved, first to the office, where his position was taken from him in one bloodless move, and then to the Stark mansion, where blood stains on the drive in front of the door had propelled him to the nearest hospital.

That’s where he learned what his beating had cost them – Anna was holding on in recovery, but doctors were increasingly cautious in the face of her refusal to regain consciousness; Jarvis was pale and drained, not responding to anything unless it was wearing a white coat; Peggy was alternately incoherent and laser-focused on recovering Dr. Jason Wilkes, re-capturing Dottie Underwood, stopping Whitney Frost, and torturing Vernon Masters – in no particular order.

She barely noticed his pained breath every time he moved, asked few questions about the SSR office take over, and didn’t touch him even once. She avoided looking him in the eye while spouting off plans and recriminations, tripping over her words, as she prepared to sweep out of the hospital on a rescue mission even crazier than the one that got them into this mess.

Daniel Sousa could take a punch. His jaw was steel, not glass. He could handle a beat-down from experts, and keep moving towards his goal.

But Peggy Carter didn’t even have to make a fist to take him down. One look and he was on the floor bleeding.

And she had stepped over him without a backwards glance.

**Author's Note:**

> I smell my ship burning...
> 
> This is not an episode tag, but a prediction. One I hope is wrong. Still - the scene wouldn't leave me alone.


End file.
